The Hacker News | Expert Insights

A 2024 Gartner® survey of 162 large enterprises shows organizations running an average of 45 cybersecurity tools. It’s no surprise, then, that 52% of executives cite complexity as the biggest barrier to effective security operations. While mid-market organizations typically run fewer tools, smaller IT and security teams mean they often face equal—or greater—operational complexity. Why Security Platforms Emerged The industry’s answer to tool sprawl has been the security platform: a consolidated approach designed to reduce complexity by replacing multiple point products. In principle, platforms promise tighter integration, improved visibility across the attack surface, better alert correlation, and faster response. Research supports this direction. The 2025 IBM Institute for Business Value report notes that organizations with higher security platform maturity identify and contain incidents more quickly. Consolidation Doesn’t Always Equal a Platform Vendor consolidation is accelera...

The employee who doesn’t exist Not long ago, the idea of a fake employee sounded far-fetched. Resume fraud? Sure. Outsourced interviews? Occasionally. But a completely synthetic person (face, voice, work history, and identity) getting hired, onboarded, and trusted inside a company used to feel like science fiction. That era is over. Gartner predicts that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide could be fake . The firm also reports that 6% of job candidates admit to interview fraud, including impersonation or having someone else interview for them. Hiring teams are already seeing face-swapping and synthetic identities appear in real interview workflows. Taken together, the pattern is clear: companies are increasingly interviewing, and in some cases hiring, people who don’t exist. These “employees” can pass screening, ace remote interviews, and start work with legitimate credentials. Then, once inside, they steal data, map internal systems, divert funds, or quietly set the...

Deepfakes aren’t just viral clips or political media anymore — they’re appearing in enterprise workflows where a camera feed is treated as proof: onboarding, account recovery, remote hiring, privileged access, and partner verification. That shift forces security teams to ask not just, “Does this look fake?” but, “Can we verify in real time that the capture is authentic and the channel isn’t compromised — without disrupting the workflow?” A new benchmark from Purdue University addresses that question. Instead of testing detectors on clean, lab-style samples, Purdue evaluated tools on real incident content pulled from social platforms — the kind of compressed, low-resolution, post-processed material that tends to break models tuned to ideal conditions. What Purdue tested — and why it matters Purdue built its benchmark around the Political Deepfakes Incident Database (PDID), which focuses on deepfake incidents circulating on X/Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Real-world distri...

AI is everywhere. What began as machine learning and evolved into novelty technology applications has rapidly progressed into a significant component of daily life and enterprise strategy. It influences how our businesses plan, code, implement, and protect our most sensitive assets. Among its most transformative applications is its growing role in identity and access management (IAM) . The Expanding Influence of AI in Identity Security Within identity security, AI is reshaping how we define a mature IAM program. What once required manual reviews, repetitive decision-making, and active triage is now increasingly supported by intelligent automation. AI streamlines operations, reduces human bottlenecks and errors, and strengthens security postures through robust, context-driven assistance and automation. The Strength of Predictive AI Modern identity programs lean heavily on predictive analytics—AI capabilities that run continuously in the background to analyze behaviors, support auto...

In November 2025, Anthropic revealed a cyber espionage campaign dubbed GTG-1002, the first documented case of an AI agent orchestrating real-world intrusions with minimal human input. A Chinese state-sponsored group manipulated Anthropic’s Claude Code assistant into executing about 80% of a multi-target hacking campaign autonomously. Instead of merely advising cybercriminals, the AI took control of key steps: reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, exploitation, credential theft, and data exfiltration across dozens of organizations. The result was an operation running at machine tempo. Claude performed tasks in a fraction of the time a human team would need, even identifying sensitive databases and writing exploits in seconds. Figure 1: The distinct phases of the Claude cyberattack At the peak of the attack, the AI made thousands of requests (often several per second), an onslaught of activity impossible for humans to match. This speed and scale of automation is a game changer: a...

For nearly two decades, offensive security has centered around the same basic ritual: schedule an annual or quarterly penetration test, brace for the findings, remediate what you can, and then repeat the next cycle next year. It’s familiar, predictable, and built into every compliance framework. It’s also fundamentally mismatched to the way modern infrastructure works and the way attackers operate.  Today’s environments change too quickly for point-in-time testing to provide real assurance. Cloud deployments shift daily; CI/CD pipelines push new code constantly, and new assets appear abruptly. A penetration test conducted in November tells you almost nothing about your exposure in January.  This is where Continuous Penetration Testing (CPT) comes in. CPT doesn’t just improve offensive security outcomes but reshapes the equation entirely. When organizations adopt continuous validation, they gain clearer visibility, shorter remediation cycles, and tangible, measurable ROI. ...

Employees are increasingly using personal AI tools, AI-powered extensions, and emerging agentic browsers to accelerate their work. But unlike sanctioned AI platforms, these tools operate inside the browser runtime, where neither CASBs, SWGs, EDRs, nor DLP solutions have visibility. This has quietly turned the browser into an unmanaged AI execution environment, giving way to a new threat known as shadow AI. Shadow AI isn’t just the latest buzzword; it’s a serious risk that leaves organizations vulnerable to data loss, cyberattacks, compliance violations, and more.  What is Shadow AI? Shadow AI refers to GenAI-powered tools, browser extensions, and browsers that workers use on their own, without any company vetting or guidance. Different from shadow IT, where unsanctioned apps or devices slip through the cracks, shadow AI lives directly in the browser.  For example, employees might use their personal Claude accounts to work with sensitive company data or work on important pr...

Insider threats are rising in both number and cost, forcing security teams to seek stronger cybersecurity solutions. At the same time, IT teams face more frequent audits and more complex data security requirements. Add to this a distributed workforce and third-party contractors, and it's clear why managing privileged access and monitoring user activity is so challenging.  Modern cybersecurity solutions must offer streamlined access management, complete oversight of user activity within your network, and a privacy-first approach to monitoring. This article offers practical tips on enhancing your cybersecurity strategy by addressing these three pillars. We'll also explore how Syteca's new release can help security leaders protect sensitive data, secure access, and improve audit readiness without IT overhead.  Monitoring User Activity while Preserving Their Privacy Keeping a close watch on user actions is critical for insider threat defense, but it raises a dilemma: "...

In cybersecurity, the old adage “trust but verify” emphasizes that granting trust should always be accompanied by oversight. Yet, with software-as-a-service (SaaS), organizations often stop at the “trust” part and never get around to the “verify.” SaaS environments in 2025 run on implicit trust. Once a user or app is authenticated and given access, it’s largely trusted indefinitely. Tokens issued to third-party apps rarely expire, integrations often get more permissions than they truly need, and automations execute with minimal human oversight. We talk about Zero Trust principles, but in practice, many SaaS platforms grant one-time approval and then assume all is well thereafter. The result is a growing security gap, where credentials and connections are implicitly trusted far beyond what’s safe, creating fertile ground for breaches and abuse. Implicit Trust in the SaaS Ecosystem Every SaaS integration or API token represents an implicit trust relationship between your organizatio...